As per an announcement from ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, Kurt Pritz, former Chief Strategy Officer at ICANN and gTLD specialist has resigned from ICANN. Until Pritz became Chief Strategy officer in October he was Vice President for Stakeholder Relations. During the new gTLD program he was the key person presenting many of the facts of the program to various stakeholders.

To the ICANN Community,

Regretfully, I have accepted the resignation of Kurt Pritz, who has served most recently as ICANN’s Chief Strategy Officer.

Kurt has submitted his resignation because of a recently identified conflict of interest, which he immediately communicated to ICANN. After analyzing this conflict of interest, we decided that a change in Kurt’s role within ICANN would be appropriate. Kurt decided to resign his position and role as an officer of ICANN, to best serve the interests of the organization. Kurt will be engaged as a subject matter expert where needed, but will have no access to new gTLD applicant information nor will he play a role in the new gTLD program.

I have already put in place a plan for the reassignment of all of Kurt’s management responsibilities.

I would like to thank Kurt for his many years of service and commitment to ICANN and our community.

Respectfully,
Fadi

Further details about the nature of the conflict of interest have not been released.